RIYADH – The government of Saudi Arabia has warned against Hajj and Umrah overstays, cautioning the tour operators to report such overstays.
The kingdom’s Ministry of Interior has announced that Hajj and Umrah service companies must follow all relevant regulations and instructions in Saudi Arabia.
The ministry has announced that fines would be imposed on companies or establishments serving pilgrims and Umrah performers for failure to report individuals who remain in the Kingdom beyond their authorized stay.
As far as the fines are concerned, it has been announced that they can reach SR100,000 ($26,600) and will be multiplied based on the number of individuals who violate their departure deadlines.
The warning comes as the kingdom prepares itself for the annual Hajj pilgrimage for which it welcomes over 2 million pilgrims form across the world.
For Pakistan, the kingdom has allocated around 180,000 seats this year and the flight operation from the country would start from the end of April. During the Hajj season, the kingdom does not issue Umrah visas.
For this year, the tour operators in Pakistan have exercised increased caution while offering Umrah visas to the applicants during the month of Ramazan and those who were traveling alone were mostly denied the visas. This was done to ensure that the pilgrims who are sent to the kingdom are genuine and no one ends up as beggar in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi Press Agency has reported the number of pilgrims who passed through four Saudi airports from the first of Ramadan until the seventh of Shawwal and the numbers are whopping i.e. over 6.8 million.
Out of these, international flights carried over 4.6 million passengers, including arrivals and departures, while 2.1 million passengers were on domestic flights.
